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Wild pigs are a big problem. Here's how they kill 'em in Texas (spoiler: it's ruthless)

A black boar.Photo: Getty images

Tyler Dawson

Published: May 16, 2019 - 8:46 AM

EDMONTON — Exhibiting an array of piggish behaviour, wild pigs are taking over swaths of Canada, scarfing up vegetation and displacing native animals, making them a wildly successful — and damaging — invasive species.

In Texas, a go-to strategy is shooting them. At night. With the help of thermal scopes.

That’s not legal in many parts of Canada. But, given that it’s a problem experts say cannot be solved by sport hunting, the American approach provides some lessons, should governments adopt a robust policy approach to wild pigs.

“We can’t barbecue our way out,” says a blog post from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees a national initiative on the management and eradication of wild pigs.

Ruth Aschim, a PhD candidate in the faculty of agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan who researched the spread of wild pigs in Canada, said a national framework is key here, too, with more research on wild pigs in order to confront the scourge.

Tackling the problem takes a multi-faceted approach because pigs are smart. So, if you’re using single pig traps, for example, said Texas hog control expert Edward Dickey, the older pigs will teach the younger pigs to be afraid of them. “You’ve gotta really have an arsenal to combat these things; one single method will not work,” Dickey said by phone from Texas.

The best bet’s trapping, using bait and corrals, over several days, to lure and make the pigs comfortable, then using a camera, and a phone app, to trap the entire herd — called a sounder — at once.

We can’t barbecue our way out

Of course, there are other strategies. You can kill wild hogs pretty much however you want in Texas, said Dickey, with the exception of poison.

“That means I can run over a hog with my truck if I want to,” he said.

But the actual plotted strategies include shooting them from helicopter and using dogs to run them down. And then there’s another, using a team of shooters to massacre the entire herd. There’s a two-fold benefit to this. In the summer, wild pigs are harder to corral since they have lots of food. So gunning them down is simpler.

But it can also be used to kill off the wild old pigs who are leery of corrals.

It’s called dumbing down the sounder. “We take out the larger hogs that are trap shy, and the younger ones, we can get them in the traps later,” said Dickey.

But this strategy of dumbing down the sounder, which Dickey says is “vital,” is very much illegal in much of Canada, since you can’t shoot at night.

This is how it works in Texas.

First, place bait. Dickey uses a mixture of corn, strawberry jello, sugar and water. “I don’t know man, they cannot resist the strawberry,” he said. “It creates a good smell.”

Second, sit in a tree stand.

Third, wait for night to fall — wild pigs are nocturnal.

Fourth, put on night vision goggles or take a look through the thermal scope on your rifle. Dickey uses an AR-15 rifle with a thermal scope.

Fifth, massacre the swine. You’re going to want a few shooters, pros, ideally, so they don’t get away. “You do a countdown,” said Dickey.

This sounds ruthless.

But the reality is that wild pigs are a big, big problem. “There’s nothing good about them,” said Aschim.

They’re hosts of many diseases, including E. coli, said Aschim, that can be transmitted to humans and livestock (although, as yet, we’re unaware of them hosting these diseases). In the United States, annual crop damage is estimated at US$1.5 billion; vehicle damage from collisions is estimated at US$36 million annually.

At the University of Saskatchewan, researchers have mapped the spread of wild pigs. The Eurasian wild boar came here in the 1980s and ’90s as part of livestock diversification programs. Then they bred with domestic pigs once they got out into the wild. “We just kinda classify them all as a wild pig, at this point,” explained Aschim.

Now, these hybridized feral pigs are scooting around the country, travelling as far as British Columbia and Quebec by 2017. The Maritimes are the only provinces that haven’t seen pig sightings. They’re concentrated heavily in the prairie provinces and are seeing “exponential growth.”

“Farmer, landowner or recreational hunting, that won’t solve the problem,” said Aschim.

Ryan Brook, a University of Saskatchewan professor and wild boar researcher — also Aschim’s supervisor — agreed, because surviving animals will flee, spreading the population further.

“Wild pigs that survive being shot at become extremely elusive and move into the heaviest hiding cover they can find and so then they are much harder to find and remove,” said Brook in an email. “For any of this to be effective requires a science-based comprehensive control strategy — just going out and removing animals without a plan and a monitoring strategy is most likely a waste of time and money.”